Fifteen years ago, when the late beer writer Michael Jackson first devoted a chapter of his book, “Michael Jackson’s Beer Companion,” to the topic of beer and food, it’s safe to say that, to the overwhelming majority of North Americans, the topic was foreign territory. Beer was then primarily for drinking on its own, or at best with pizza or a backyard barbecue. To invite ale or lager to an elegant dinner table would have been, in a word, crass.